Bad Behavior – Updated New Release

If you are a fan of the wonderful comment spam plugin Bad Behavior, the WordPress Plugin with “gives the finger to spammers and bots not on good behavior”, then get excited because ioerror has released a new version!

As a paranoid website administrator, I am constantly on the alert for comment spam, and I’m a long time fan of Bad Behavior. The new version features a time-testing criteria that puts comment spam bots that leave their litter across mutliple blogs in a very short time OUT THE DOOR.

In Bad Behavior 1.2.1, a new feature was implemented which blocked the IP address of a spammer for 48 hours. As it turns out, this is too long for some, too short for others. The new version takes a more balanced approach.

Now, if a spammer is blocked, its IP address is blocked for 10 minutes. If another attempt is received, the block is doubled to 20 minutes. And so on, without limit.

All attempts which are currently in the bad_behavior_log count toward this blocking, so changing the logging duration from the default of 7 days will have an effect on how effectively this new blocking works.